1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to techniques for encoding data and tackles in a specific way the problem of encoding digital signals that are to be transmitted on a bus, the chief purpose being to reduce the transitions of the signal levels on the bus, i.e., what, in the sector is generally referred to as “switching activity” (SA).
2. Description of the Related Art
To reduce transitions, and consequently switching activity on buses, a known solution is to resort to various encoding techniques. The technique currently referred to as the bus-inverter (BI) technique is considered the solution most suitable for buses of small size, for example of up to 8 bits, even though the results may vary according to the type of data processed.
The bus-inverter technique implements an encoding based upon the logical inversion of the bits of the signals transmitted and uses an additional bus-line, designated by INV, to indicate to the receiver whether the datum sent is inverted or not.
Designated by D(t) is the datum that it is intended to transmit and by B(t) the corresponding datum that travels on the bus at a generic instant in time t. The working principle underlying the bus-inverter technique is essentially represented by the logic expression:(B(t), INV(t))+(D(t), 0) if H(D(t), B(t−1))≦n/2 (NOT(D(t)), 1) in the other cases.
In the expression appearing above, n indicates the dimension of the bus expressed in number of bits, whilst the operator H(.) indicates a distance operator, such as, for example, the Hamming distance. The symbol NOT(.) indicates of course the logic-inversion operation (0→1, 1→0).
Basically, the decision as regards whether to invert or not to invert the datum is taken by calculating the distance between the datum D(t) that it is intended to send at the instant t and the datum B(t−1) used for transmission on the bus for the preceding instant of transmission.
The technique described above is used also in variants like the one referred to as “Adapted Partial Bus Inverter” (APBI). With this technique; developed above all for use on buses of large dimensions, the number of bits to which the bus-inverter technique is to be applied is reduced by means of masks. These are masks that are kept fixed for an entire transmission window and calculated by means of an estimate made on the type of data to be transmitted. This involves considerable processing times and the need to resort to a circuit of a rather complicated type for the calculation/estimation of the mask.